


Break, Rewind, Repeat

by Raindropsonwhiskers



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Angst, Dark Doctor (Doctor Who), Dark Thirteenth Doctor, Hurt No Comfort, Implied/Referenced Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Mind Control, Mind Manipulation, Non-Consensual Drug Use, Other, Post-Episode: s12e10 The Timeless Children, Sort Of, Stockholm Syndrome, The Vault (Doctor Who), Time Lord Telepathy (Doctor Who), implied - Freeform, liiiittle bit of Valeyard!13 at the very end, the telepathic equivalent of
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-28
Updated: 2020-10-28
Packaged: 2021-03-09 03:06:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,509
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27237757
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Raindropsonwhiskers/pseuds/Raindropsonwhiskers
Summary: The Master escapes Gallifrey, and wishes he hadn't, because the Doctor's TARDIS is much harder to get free from.
Relationships: The Doctor/The Master (Doctor Who), Thirteenth Doctor/The Master (Dhawan)
Comments: 20
Kudos: 58





	Break, Rewind, Repeat

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ineternity](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ineternity/gifts).



> This idea was suggested by Kat (ineternity) and my angsty little gremlin brain latched on and refused to let go. So, heed the tags and enjoy!

He's seven ginger beers into one hell of a bad decision when he sees her. His head is swimming, certainly not helped by the painfully bright lights of the bar, because people on this planet couldn't even get the atmosphere of a gloomy pub right. Still, he'd know her anywhere, even without the ridiculous blue coat she's so fond of; if the beeline she's making for his booth is any indication, then she spotted him as well.

"You're a mess," she says by way of greeting, plopping herself down across from him without asking. "Really? It's only noon."

She seems remarkably unsurprised to find him alive - certainly less surprised than he is to find her out of jail. Escaping Shada isn't beyond her abilities, he knows that much, but he had expected a few decades of imprisonment to have had some negative effect on her. Depressingly, perhaps inevitably, she's nearly chipper.

"'S nona your business," he mumbles, glaring balefully at her. "Y'were s'posed to kill us both. 'Course I'mma mess."

Whoops. Too honest, there. This body tends to be, though; too many painful emotions all over the place to lie to her in any way that matters.

She pulls the glass he's nursing away from him, ignoring the pathetic attempt he makes to grab it back. "Look, just listen to me. I want to talk to you."

"That's a first," he snorts. "You're more ofa- a thwart first, ask later kinda..." The sentence trails off to an unsatisfying conclusion as his ginger-soaked brains scramble to think of a noun to end it with.

"I'm being serious," she says, and she seems to mean it. Her eyes have gone cold and dark like they did when she- "I want you to come with me, Master."

She says his name so emotionlessly, now. No anger, no hatred, no sadness, no slight waver in her voice, no sign that she's said it at all once the last syllable is gone. Still, it's her voice saying his name, and that makes him smile.

"Why?"

"I had a lot of time to think about- about us," she explains. "About where we messed up last time."

His blood runs cold, the pleasant haze of inebriation gone in seconds as he realizes exactly what she's talking about. It's not enough that she couldn't kill them both, not enough that she left some pathetic human to do the job for her; no, now she has to go and talk about the last time he'd been  _ stupid _ enough to think she could ever actually love him.

"I know it won't be easy, but we could... we could try again." She takes a sip from his mug, and he can't help but notice that she doesn't react to the strength of the ginger. "I know where we went wrong, and I think I can fix it if-"

He cuts her off, fury rising hot and dark in his chest. "No."

"What do you mean, no?" she asks, frowning. "You said that you wanted to be friends again, and now I'm offering."

A sarcastic, bitter laugh spills from his lips.

"You don't want to be  _ friends, _ " he sneers. "You want to try to  _ fix _ me again. That's all I am to you, some unruly pet to train properly until I won't care if you ignore me again. Until I'm like one of your little humans, following you around in awe and saving kittens from trees to make you proud." A lump rises in his throat and he swallows, hard, trying to push past it. "And I'm telling you I would rather die. I  _ wish _ I'd died. I wish you'd done the job properly instead of being a coward. Or are you so high and mighty, Timeless Child-" she flinches satisfyingly at that, and he grins "-that you couldn't even kill me yourself? Couldn't even lower yourself that far?"

And oh, there's that emotion he'd been missing, there's that rage she wears so beautifully. Her fingers tighten on the handle of the mug, her eyes go dark - backlit by the lights as she is, he can't even see her pupils - and her shoulders tense. He's hit a nerve, and now he can only hope that she'll hit back.

He doesn't want to play nice with her. He doesn't want the soft, sweet lies of their past bodies; the deceptive promise that if he just cut away all of himself she would love him. Just a little at a time, bit by bit until there's nothing left. No, he doesn't want that. But her anger, her  _ fury _ when she looks at him… he wants that more than he could say. At least it's not pity.

"Will you just listen to me?" she snaps. "For once? I want to help you! You're not okay."

Of course he isn't. Never once does she acknowledge that that's her fault. Really, by now, he should've seen that coming.

"And I said no, Doctor." He stands, intending to leave. Maybe she'll follow him out and he can get into a proper fistfight, or maybe she'll let him leave. He'd be happy with either. "If you wanted to help, maybe you shouldn't have let me live."

After all of two steps, he feels her hand grip his arm, forcing him to stop. A part of him lights up with delight at her touch, begging him to melt into it. Viciously, he squashes that impulse down and yanks his arm out of her grip with a growl.

"I'm leaving," he says firmly.

"No, you're not. You're not  _ listening. _ " She grabs his arm again, harder - enough to bruise, he thinks - and then presses her other hand to his temple.

Instantly, he feels her mind press against his. It's changed since he last felt it, and it is beautiful and terrible all at once. It's a little bit like drowning, like being swallowed up by something so incomprehensibly massive that it feels more like a force of nature than a living thing, like entropy and fury and-

His shields break. They've never done that before, never splintered inward in piercing fractals against his own thoughts, a broken glass window letting a thief slip inside; except she's not a thief, she's a tidal wave and an avalanche and so much more than he can take. It  _ hurts, _ overwhelming his mind because everything is soaked in  _ her, _ her history and her life and her being.

He had known, when he showed her who - what - she truly is, that there were more redacted secrets lurking in her past than he had been able to find. But there's a difference between knowing that and feeling the force of it shoved into his mind like a battering ram. How can he fight back against that, when he can't even fully comprehend it?

Distantly, floating somewhere above it all, he feels his knees hit the sticky floor of the pub. Her arms are steady under him as she picks him up, and it would almost be comforting if he could feel anything more than white-hot awareness where she's touching him and achingly cold nothingness everywhere else.

Any cognisance of the world that he has left slips away as his mind begins to try to put itself together. Thoughts and shields and organizational systems rebuild themselves piece by piece, putting the glass back together, even though she's  _ still in his mind, _ still imposing herself onto his psyche. But he can't function with his every neuron scattered, so what other option do his brains have than to build around her presence?

The room he wakes in is a mimicry of what his bedroom in the Vault had looked like, and he hates her for that. The same soft mattress and warm duvet, the same pillows and silk pillowcases, the same grey, windowless stone walls. It's not, though; he can feel the hum and buzz of her TARDIS around him, and if he were to step out of that infuriatingly familiar door right now, he knows it wouldn't lead to the main room of the Vault.

Or perhaps it will. Perhaps she's dedicated enough to this farce to have constructed a full recreation of his former prison. She's certainly cruel enough to.

He considers not getting out of bed, just laying there until she comes to see why he isn't playing along with her little game. But this body is bad at staying still, always rushing and bouncing and moving, and there's an overwhelming urge to find her itching under his skin.

So he gets up. She must have changed his clothes, because gone is the purple suit he'd so painstakingly put together, and in its place is a simple shirt and trousers. It's something he should be more indignant about, but why bother? From her intrusion of his mind, she's already shown that she doesn't care about his privacy. What difference does it make, now, if she changed his clothing, too?

He was right. The door doesn't open to the Vault - it leads straight into the winding, amber-lit corridors of her TARDIS. As he steps out, he half-expects to be stopped by some sort of barrier, but he's able to put bare feet on the smooth floor of the hall without interruption.

Immediately, more out of habit than because he thinks it's worth doing, the Master goes looking for the console room. In an unsurprising, but quite frustrating, move, the TARDIS loops his path in on itself, sending him around and around in circles. Past the library, the room he woke in, a small workshop, several other rooms, and then back around to the library. The message is clear - he can roam, but only so far.

Hopes of escape temporarily dashed, he instead begins looking for her. Now, strangely enough, his selection of rooms has increased slightly. There's an additional door, sandwiched neatly between the pool and the garden. Unlike the other doors, which are helpfully labeled in tidy, mechanical Gallifreyan, this one has a cheap Earth nameplate stuck to the faux-wood.

_ The Doctor's Room. _ As if it could be anything else.

To be polite, he knocks. No response comes. In a less polite move, he tries the knob and, finding it unlocked, opens the door.

He had expected a bedroom. Instead, he finds a workshop, larger than the one he's been so  _ generously _ allowed to access and precisely as chaotic as he would have expected from her. She's sat bent over a table, welding goggles over her eyes and headphones muffling her ears.

The urge to be close to her settles, a little, at the proximity. His shoulders relax, his hearts slow and steady, thoughts drifting idly past. How nice it would be to just sit next to her and watch her work; how easy it would be to help her, even; how happy it would make her if he did.

He's always had a knack for telepathy, and he knows when a thought isn't wholly his own. Those last few, soft and insistent and innocuous as they may be, are certainly not. Suspicion and foggy memories rise in his chest. For the first time since he woke, he actually  _ looks _ at his own mind.

_ Ah. _ Well. That would explain a few things.

His mind used to be neatly organized, with the pinprick precision of madness. Every memory had its place, every thought its own dedicated pathway, every impulse and feeling tucked away and filed. Even the chaos of taking in the Matrix and the Cyberium both hadn't been enough to ruin the system. All of that is in disarray, now; upturned and disorganized by the wonderful, terrible being mere meters away from him. And, perhaps more pressingly, it isn't over.

Her presence still lingers in his mind, a fragment of her own self embedded innocently in his mental state like it had always been there. His thoughts move effortlessly around it, twining over and through the intrusion despite his attempts to reroute them. It's slithered, oozed,  _ spread _ into his memories and his once-tidy systems, and he doesn't think he can get it out.

It's brute-force psychic manipulation, the sort he never would have thought she would lower herself to, before; just shoving a piece of her mind into his and letting it fester. Usually, it wouldn't have even  _ worked. _ His shields are more than sophisticated enough to block that sort of attack. But he'd been drunk and taken by surprise, and her mind has much more force behind it now than it ever did before.

There's an irony to that, somewhere, he thinks. After all, it's only because of him that she even knows about her past - and it's that incomprehensibly long history, the weight and  _ power _ of it, that gave her mind such force. Yet another plan of his, turned around to make him face the consequences. He really ought to have learned by now.

"Is there something wrong?" she asks, and he blinks, focusing on the present again. "You've been standing there a while."

Her voice is casual, pleasant, as if this is a normal day. Like she's actually concerned about him. She's taken the headphones off, he notes.

He decides to cut to the chase, stepping closer until he's looming over her. "Why am I here, Doctor?"

"What do you mean?" She pushes her welding goggles up onto her forehead. "You walked yourself over here, didn't you? Or do you mean metaphorically? Because I've got this new theory about-"

"Why am I on your TARDIS?" His patience is already wearing thin for her games. Normally, the banter would delight him, but  _ normally _ doesn't apply to the situation at hand.

Her face falls. "Oh. That. You passed out, so I brought you back here. If you really don't want to stay, you can go."

His memories of the previous night are ginger-tinged and unreliable, but the current state of his mind is a fairly good indicator that she's leaving off some details of just  _ how _ he passed out. This body of hers may not lie as much, but she most certainly misleads by omission.

"I tried. Your ship won't let me," he snaps.

"Sorry 'bout that." She stands, taking away the one tiny advantage he'd had. "I'll show you out, then. She's probably just a little upset at you."

Goggles still perched on her forehead, seemingly unconcerned by his urge to leave, she brushes past him on her way towards the door. Her shoulder barely touches his, not even making skin contact, but his knees go a little weak as his mind  _ floods _ with bliss and a sensation of wholeness that he hasn't truly had since he was a child. Annoyed, he forces the feeling down. Just another side effect of her presence in his head. He'll learn to ignore it until he can fix it.

Through the winding corridors of the TARDIS she goes, not even looking behind her to see if he's following. He is - of course he is - but the lack of any sort of  _ care _ only digs salt into the wounds his discovery on Gallifrey had slashed open. Why would she care, though, when he's so far below her that he might as well be one of her humans? Why bother looking, when she knows he'll trail along like a lost pet, just like he always has?

Finally, they reach the console room, and the Doctor stops, almost hesitant, near the controls. "Where do you want me to drop you off?"

He tries not to show his surprise that she's even asking. He'd expected to be dumped wherever she saw fit; some junkyard planet, or somewhere so undeveloped it wouldn't even be worth glancing at. Instead, she's placing the whole cosmos at his fingertips and asking him where he wants to go. There must be a catch. With her, there always is.

"Earth," he says. "2007."

It's a press against her buttons, asking her to bring him then. His younger self - backstabbing traitor that he becomes - is lurking around then, and it's such a delicate point in time that even a hint of interference could snap several very important threads like twigs. Actually, between Saxon, Missy, and a younger version of this body, one more iteration of himself at that time might put enough strain on the timelines to do that without any more help. She'd have to be mad to agree.

"Sure," she replies, and begins typing in the coordinates. "Any particular place?"

Floundering for a moment, unprepared for her to actually say yes, he says the first place that comes to mind. "London."

She nods, sets it in, and pulls down the dematerialization lever. The distinctive wheeze of her barely-functional ship starts up, and he soon finds himself sprawled on the steps for lack of anywhere else that won't end with him on the floor. With a thunk, the ship settles into place, and the door swings open.

"Go on, then," she says. "If you really don't want to stay, you can walk out that door now. I won't stop you."

Still suspicious, because she's never said that and genuinely meant it, he stands and heads for the door. Each step, he expects something to go wrong, or for the door to slam shut, or for her to tell him that she was lying. He stands in the doorway, mere centimeters from the outside world, and waits for the other shoe to drop.

When nothing happens, though he stands right in the doorway for nearly a full minute, he takes a cautious step outside, bracing for a pain that doesn't come. His feet hit dirty London cobblestones, he smells fresh - relatively speaking - air, and he can hear the bustle of people. Never in all of his lives has he been so happy to be in this place.

He lets his guard down. It's a mistake he should have known better than to make. The next few steps away from the TARDIS are nearly at a run, and it takes him completely by surprise when his skull splits in two. He collapses before he even processes anything more than  _ pain. _ Knees hit the cobbles, then hands, his heartbeats pounding in his ears and vision blackening at the edges. His mind feels like it's being torn to pieces, claws of burning anguish digging in and slicing through his thoughts like butter, leaving shredded coherency in their wake.

And then… it stops. The pain is gone as quickly as it had arrived, and there's a hand on his shoulder, comforting, and he wants to cry from sheer relief. It takes a moment to pull himself together enough to stand, and he finds himself face to face with  _ her. _ She doesn't look surprised, so much as resigned, or maybe even satisfied.

"What. Did. You.  _ Do. _ " His voice comes out a snarl, fury lacing the short, sharp syllables.

"You're far too clever to be asking that," she says softly.

He hates her. He hates her, he hates her, he hates her. He wants to kill her, but it won't stick even if he does. He wants to throttle her and break that lovely, cruel face and  _ end this. _

"You said I could leave if I wanted to," he pants, breath still uneven. "Doesn't seem like that's true."

"Didn't say it'd be pleasant," she points out.

Oh, this goes far beyond  _ unpleasant. _ It's a torture method, one that they'd used on deserters during the Time War, as he knows firsthand, but never so cruelly as this. That had been a small, jagged piece of psychic suggestion, lodged neatly into his pain regulation so that any disobedience would be punished swiftly and agonizingly. But this… this is so much worse. Larger, more thorough control of his mind, and location-tied as a result. The instant he'd left the TARDIS' shields - and thus the immediate range of its psychic field - the connection had stretched too thin, and he was plunged into horrifying pain.

It's a brutal, inelegant  _ tether, _ where snapping it means snapping his own neck. And he's pretty sure it's deeply entrenched enough that it would stick around even if he regenerated, so it's now a lovely, permanent fixture of his mind, forever tying him to her at the cost of his freedom and sanity. The drums seem almost enjoyable in comparison.

"You're a hypocrite," he snaps. "A lying, manipulative, cruel hypocrite. The moment you think you can force me to do what you want, every one of those precious morals goes out the window."

That gets a reaction, her eyes darting guiltily away from him, but it's not enough.

"What would your little humans think, if they knew what you've done? It's barbaric, even by their standards."

There. Her lip curls in a sneer, imperious and every inch the Oncoming Storm.

"I'm trying to  _ help, _ " she insists, even as she looks at him like he is less than nothing. "If you would just listen to me-"

"And if I do, will you undo it?" he asks, eyebrow raised.

She stops, eyes going guarded and dark, lips pressing together. An unspoken reply, heard clear as day.

He laughs, just as cruel as she is. "Thought so."

Really, it's not surprising. She's always been terrible at losing, admitting that she's wrong. If the reason last time didn't work was something more than the simple fact that they're two sides of a coin, not meant to be one-dimensional and identical, then surely it must be a fault on his end - too much free will, perhaps, or not enough blind obedience. So, logically, taking that out of the equation will solve the problem.

Without another word, he lets her pull him back to the TARDIS. Before - ever so long ago, and yet he stands within the same city as the iteration of him that will make the same choice in little more than a year - he died to avoid such a fate. Then, he chose it somewhat willingly, and that self, too, is not too far away. Even the self that is living with the consequences of both those choices is nearby. Now, here he stands, after each of those answers to the question, having the ability  _ to _ answer taken. How is he supposed to fight back, when she is so much more than him? He really has no choice but to play along with her fantasy of  _ fixing  _ him, though he hardly plans to make it easy. If she intends to treat him like a toy, like one of her easily manipulated humans, then he will make it as miserable as he can for her.

If only it were easier to ignore the rush of soothing, calm happiness that hits him as she tugs him along by his arm. Knowing that it's artificial, only brought on by her presence in his mind, doesn't make it any less smothering for his other emotions and thoughts.

The inside of her TARDIS feels almost claustrophobic with the knowledge that he can't leave weighing on his already overburdened mind. She lets go of his arm, and he stands where she leaves him. There's no point in moving.

"Well, if you're staying, we might as well pop into the Vortex," she says brightly, as if none of the past five minutes ever happened. "We can hang out there until you get adjusted, okay?"

He starts to make a remark about how tempting the thought of throwing himself into the deadly embrace of the Vortex is, when her presence in his mind  _ pushes _ down and he stops. Then he pushes back, trying to say something horrible just to see what happens.

The short answer is agony. The long answer is a feeling like having his brains pressed into a new mold, and a sharp, deliberate jab to his pain regulation.

So, he's not allowed to say anything to break the illusion of willing participation, now. Can't have anything ruining the idealistic and selfish lie she's living. He wishes he could be more surprised.

The only response he gives her is a sharp nod, glaring at her all the while. She doesn't deserve the satisfaction of hearing him verbalize any sort of agreement. Or, more accurately, he isn't willing to give her that. After all, she's a deity, something so much more than him - who is he to say what she deserves?

Her ship shudders and rattles as they settle in the Vortex, and he nearly falls over. She catches his arm, keeping him upright, and another wave of that sickly relief hits him.

Is this going to happen every time she touches him? he wonders. Some twisted positive reinforcement to make him more complacent with this imprisonment?

He hopes not. His anger at her is the only thing keeping the broken pieces of him together, and if he starts to lose that, he'll lose himself.

"Why don't we go to the gardens?" she suggests, cheerfully. "It'll be a nice place to relax, don't you think?"

His furious glare had slipped when she grabbed him, and regaining it is a bit of an uphill battle against her-in-his-mind, but he manages. She frowns, faking genuine concern.

"Or not. Plenty of other rooms. How about the library? You used to like it there."

_ Missy _ used to like it there, in that ever-so-brief span of time when she'd been allowed relatively free range of the TARDIS. The chaise lounges had been perfect for sprawling on while reading something suitably gothic and grim.

The thought of going there now makes his stomach churn. He doesn't want to go  _ anywhere _ with her, but least of all somewhere with that many memories.

She ignores the shake of his head. "Brilliant! Come on, then."

Her grip tightens on his arm, and her mind presses down firmly against his, and he is helpless to do anything but follow.

She'd like to think that he's improving, after three months. The first few weeks were rough, of course, but that wasn't particularly surprising, given the circumstances. It's always hard for someone prideful to accept that they need help, and he certainly exemplified that.

After the first few escape and suicide attempts, though, he'd come around. Positive reinforcement, that's what she put it down to. Whenever he behaved, she tried so hard to reward him for it. She hadn't done that enough with Missy, and that was the big issue with them.

Thank goodness she's learned from her mistakes. Otherwise, this whole effort might be for nothing, and she'd just  _ hate _ that.

She tells him all of this, of course, as they enjoy a nice picnic in the gardens. He barely even scowls as she does.

Somewhere, deep down, there's a curl of guilt. Something that insists she's doing this all wrong, that it doesn't count if he's only there by force, and that she's not behaving very much like the Doctor ought to. She supposes that something might have a point; she hasn't used that name in almost three months. Perhaps it's a little dramatic, but she really feels that Valeyard suits her better these days.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Sugar, Spice and All Things Nice](https://archiveofourown.org/works/29828553) by [ineternity](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ineternity/pseuds/ineternity)




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